Zulu on the Machair, at Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre North Uist, brought together a number of British artists who have a shared passion for fly-fishing. ‘Zulu on the Machair’ takes its name from the small black Zulu hand-tied fly popular amongst anglers who fish the lochs and rivers of the Outer Hebrides. Co-curated by Professor Keith McIntyre, former Head of Arts at Northumbria University and Andy Mackinnon, Arts Manager Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre and UistFilm. Workshops, demonstrations, talks, and film took place throughout March and April bringing together local fly tiers and fishers with artworks.

The works made specially for the exhibition 'Triggers', combines my interests in using the found and detritus for the making of art alongside observations of being in the landscape while fishing and witnessing the growing residues of human contact on nature come into being. The Moray cod lured to golf balls; the tragic sea turtles attracted to polythene bags; leatherbacks listed on the IUCN’s endangered Red List that appear to mistake floating plastic in the form of bags or sheets for jellyfish and then eat them; cotton bud sticks and baby wipes noted as among the top ten marine polluters found during coastal clean-ups ; the estimated 46,000 pieces of marine litter floating on every square mile of ocean. This work attempts to engage with the tragic irony of triggers, their beauty and their lure. Materials in the hand of the artist, fly tyer, or rod builder can be careful and crafted; in triggers, detritus is gathered and made using the tiers’ techniques to create and present these new, more sinister species of lures and flies. The inclusion of one of my own hand built yomogi fly rods aims to show something of this attempt at an integrated experience of fly, rod, fishing, making, craft and art. Using blanks hand spun by craftsman Kazutomo Ijuin, unlike more contemporary fast action rods, the yomogi fibre glass blank has a parabolic action, allowing a build that is closer to cane, and an experience of the moment - the cast and the catch - that is slower and more visceral.